Microsoft Apologizes After Trying To Cash In On Amy Winehouse's Death

The company asked its Twitter followers to buy the artist's Back to Black album on its Zune site.

Yesterday, its UK public relations team offered up this from its tweetbox 360 account: "Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse 'download' tweet seemed purely commercially motivated. Far from the case, we assure you."

Meanwhile, Winehouse's album topped the sales chart on iTunes on Monday.

This isn't Microsoft's first Twitter offense. After the Japanese tsunami in March, the company used the disaster to promote Bing. It posted this tweet:

How you can #SupportJapan - http://binged.it/fEh7iT. For every retweet, @bing will give $1 to Japan quake victims, up to $100K.

After backlash, the company apologized 7 hours later, and donated more than $2 million to disaster relief.

According to Dan Frommer, the best corporate Twitter accounts are engaging ("a feed clearly written by humans including a good mix of news, tips, deals, contests, photos/video and basic customer support"). In this case, Microsoft was too engaging.